Ann Coulter

[tahnan]

I'm sorry. I couldn't help it. I'd never read any Ann Coulter before, so I read the article she wrote for USA Today, and, well, er.

Here at the Spawn of Satan convention in Boston, conservatives are deploying a series of covert signals to identify one another, much like gay men do.

Good way to start out on a nice balanced footing. I know, I know, who am I kidding, Ann Coulter couldn't find fair and balanced on a carnival scale, but it's a column for USA Today, you'd think she'd make an effort.

My allies are the ones wearing crosses or American flags.

Then she's got a lot of allies cheering speakers at the Fleet Center, because every time they pan across the crowd there's no shortage of people wearing American flags. Crosses are too small to see on TV monitors, so I can't particularly speak to that, though I rather suspect a lot of people in the hall are wearing crosses. The ministers who offer the benedictions, for instance.

The people sporting shirts emblazened with the "F-word" are my opponents. Also, as always, the pretty girls and cops are on my side, most of them barely able to conceal their eye-rolling.

Democrats are constantly suing and slandering police as violent, fascist racists -- with the exception of Boston's police, who'll be lauded as national heroes right up until the Democrats pack up and leave town on Friday, whereupon they'll revert to their natural state of being fascist, racist pigs.

A speaker at the Democratic National Convention this year, Al Sharpton, accused white police officers of raping and defacing Tawana Brawley in 1987, lunatic charges that eventually led to a defamation lawsuit against Sharpton and even more eventually, to Sharpton paying a jury award to the defamed plaintiff Steve Pagones. So it's a real mystery why cops wouldn't like Democrats.

Astonishingly, most of this paragraph is true. The leap in logic from "Al Sharpton acted like an idiot towards cops in 1987" to "all Democrats are loathsome to cops" almost doesn't need pointing out, and indeed it seems to be sufficiently par for the course for Coulter.

As for the pretty girls, I can only guess that it's because liberal boys never try to make a move on you without the UN Security Council's approval. Plus, it's no fun riding around in those dinky little hybrid cars.

Those hybrid cars that whose sales are up around the country? Those dinky hybrid cars like the Ford Escape SUV? The hybrid cars that the Senate recently tried to more than double the tax credit for, based on the CLEAR Act of Orrin Hatch (Republican from Utah, the state with the highest proportion of Bush voters to Gore voters in 2000)?

My pretty-girl allies stick out like a sore thumb amongst the corn-fed, no make-up, natural fiber, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie chick pie wagons they call "women" at the Democratic National Convention.

Let's see. I always thought "corn-fed" referred to rustic, rural qualities, and Merriam-Webster agrees, and that's the sort of thing I would have thought Coulter would support. But perhaps she means "plump," in which case I have no idea what DNC women she means. Not Heinz Kerry (I'm watching a tape of her speech), not most of the women in the audience... Most of those women seem to be wearing makeup, and as far as I can tell they're not wearing sandals and they're well-groomed.

I don't even know what "pie wagon" means, and Google is no help, so I assume that Coulter is just making up expressions that she hopes sound insulting.

Apparently, the nuts at the Democratic National Convention are going to be put in cages outside the convention hall. Sadly, they won't be fighting to the death as is done in W.W.F. caged matches. They're calling this the "protestor's area," although I suppose a better name would be the "truth-free zone".

No one's calling it the "protestor's area": the only Google hits for the phrase are for Coulter's article. What people are calling it is a "free speech zone," and the first Google hit for that is an American Conservative article from last December:

When Bush came to the Pittsburgh area on Labor Day 2002...[t]he local police, at the Secret Service's behest, set up a "designated free-speech zone" on a baseball field surrounded by a chain-link fence a third of a mile from the location of Bush's speech.

But if Ann Coulter thinks that those who protest the Democrats are "truth-free," I have no problem with that. Her rhetoric seems to be collapsing in on itself, however.

I thought this was a great idea until I realized the nut category did not include Sharpton, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, and Teddy Kennedy -- all featured speakers at the convention. I'd say the actual policy is only untelegenic nuts get the cages, but little Dennis Kucinich is speaking at the Convention, too. So it must be cages for nuts who have not run for president as serious candidates for the Democratic Party.

Looking at the line-up of speakers at the Convention, I have developed the 7-11 challenge: I will quit making fun of, for example, Dennis Kucinich, if he can prove he can run a 7-11 properly for 8 hours. We'll even let him have an hour or so of preparation before we open up. Within 8 hours, the money will be gone, the store will be empty, and he'll be explaining how three 11-year olds came in and asked for the money and he gave it to them.

Francis Heaney at Heaneyland! covers that one quite nicely. What sort of criterion is it to hate someone, he asks, by posing a hypothetical challenge and then assuming they'll fail it? And one does wonder: could Bush run a 7-11 for eight hours? Could Coulter? I'm not sure that I could. On the other hand, I'd love to see Kucinich take her up on the challenge and run a 7-11 for eight hours.

For 20 years, the Democrats wouldn't let Jimmy Carter within 100 miles of a Convention podium. The fact that Carter is now their most respectable speaker tells you where that party is today.

Commentators were noting, before the convention began, that the Democrats notoriously don't treat their losers well. (Where are Mondale and Dukakis, anyway?) Where that party is today is recognizing that a man who won the Nobel Peace Prize should be a respected leader in the party.

Maybe they just want to remind Americans who got us into this Middle East mess in the first place. W've got millions of fanatical Muslims trying to slaughter Americans while shouting Allah Akbar! Yeah, let's turn the nation over to these guys.

Carter got us into this Middle East mess? Well, thank heavens Coulter has cleared that up for us.

With any luck, Gore will uncork his speech comparing Republicans to Nazis. Just a few weeks ago, Gore gave a speech accusing the Bush administration of deploying digital "Brown Shirts" to intimidate journalists and pressure the media into writing good things about Bush -- in case you were wondering where all those glowing articles about Bush were coming from.

In fact, I did rather wonder why anyone wrote positive articles about Bush. Coulter undoubtedly thinks that it's the liberal media who were so kind to Howard Dean when he was, briefly, the apparent frontrunner.

The last former government official to slake his thirst so deeply with the kool-aid and become a far-left peacenik was Ramsey Clarke and it took him a few years to really blossom. Clinton must have done some number on Gore. Then again, with his yen for earth tones in a man's wardrobe, maybe Gore's references to "Brown Shirts" was intended as a compliment.

Only one major newspaper -- the Boston Herald -- reported Gore's Brown Shirt comment, though a Bush campaign spokesman's statement quoting the "Brown Shirt" line made it into the very last sentence of a Los Angeles Times article.

And CNN, of course. Unfortunately, searching Google News doesn't go back very far, so I can't verify that statement. However...

The New York Times responded with an article criticizing both Republicans and Democrats for using Nazi imagery. Democrats call Republicans Nazis, the Republicans quote the Democrats calling Republicans Nazis and both are using Nazi imagery. (It's a cycle of violence!)

If Coulter thinks that the only Nazi imagery the Republicans are using comes from quoting Gore, perhaps she should watch Bush's campaign video, the one that juxtaposes John Kerry and Howard Dean with Adolf Hitler.

The Republican claim is that the Hitler images are those used by Democrats, which is not true, or at least those used by moveon.org, which is also not true. They were part of videos posted to moveon.org, which MoveOn removed as soon as they were alerted to the content. But notice that in the script, the ad is referred to as a "MoveOn.org Ad" and refers to its content only as "[Inaudible chanting, clip from ad]".

The nuts in the cages are virtual Bertrand Russells compared to the official speakers at the Democratic Convention. On the basis of their placards, I gather the caged-nut position is that they love the troops so much, they don't want them to get hurt defending America from terrorist attack. Support the troops, the signs say, bring them home.

That's my new position on all government workers, except the 5% who aren't useless, which is to say cops, prosecutors, firemen and U.S. servicemen. I love bureaucrats at the National Endowment of the Arts funding crucifixes submerged in urine so much -- I think they should go home. I love public school teachers punishing any mention of God and banning Christmas songs so much -- I think they should go home.

Never having read Ann Coulter's work before, I had no idea she was a libertarian. I didn't know she advocated privatizing all schools (how many children will that leave behind?) and, apparently, the postal service. And the Departments of Public Works.

Walking back from the convention site I chatted with a normal Bostonian for several blocks -- who must have identified me through our covert system of signals.

Much more likely than the scenario in which he was hitting on you because he thought you were cute...darnit, darnit, I was going to avoid ad hominem attacks. I really was.

He was mostly bemused by the Democrats' primetime speakers and told me he used to be an independent, but for the last 20 years found himself voting mostly Republican. Then he corrected himself and said he votes for the American.

I'd say I love all these Democrats in Boston so much I want them to go home, but I don't. I want Americans to get a good long look at the French Party and keep the 7-11 challenge in mind.

You know, I really just plain don't understand this use of "French" as a general derogatory adjective. In what respect is the Democratic Party at all like the French? (Who has more in common with Jean-Marie Le Pen, the Democrats or the Republicans?)

I think the only thing I can do is quote Barry Weintraub from Monday night's "Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn": Going to Ann Coulter for a fact is like going to Adolf Hitler for a kosher recipe. It's a Nazi reference, but I'll stand by it.

Comments

[mattbeo.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised more people haven't been talking about the Serrano NEA controversy in this election, given that it's such a current event.

[mattbeo.livejournal.com]

Also, FWIW, judging by a Google search, "pie wagons" is a derogatory synonym for "overweight women". Now there's an example of mature, well-reasoned political criticism.

My impression of the piece is that

• Coulter cannot write her way out of a paper bag, and
• stuck in said paper bag without recourse to a solid line of argument or even a central thesis, she is reduced to scattershot puerile vitriol.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

I figured that was what it was supposed to mean, but I couldn't find anything on Google to back it up. "Pie wagon" and "pie wagons" both returned primarily pages about, well, wagons from which people sold pies. (And people quoting her column.)

Skimming the hits for "pie wagons" again, I do notice one use in the National Lampoon, and one in the Dartmouth Review. I still can't help feeling that Coulter was reaching for some sort of hip slang term and ended up so flooded by her invective that she lost what little control of the language she had.

[flit.livejournal.com]

Pie wagon: full of pie! Mmm, pie.

And wow, it boggles me that this is someone who is considered helpful by her party. You'd think all that seething hatred would be a big turn-off.

[flit.livejournal.com]

Oh, and why should looks have anything to do with politics anyhow? Does she sincerely think we should pick candidates for being 'telegenic?' Huh?

[agrimony.livejournal.com]

No, she's criticizing the Democrats by implying that the only candidates or politicos they'll get behind are ones who look good on TV.

Because, obviously, a Democratic candidate couldn't possibly ever beat an Ordained By God Republican on his own merits and his stance on the issues. :)

The irony here is, when a "liberal" writer pulls this kind of writing, Coulter and her posse are all over them to tear them to shreds. Coulter stirs up fear in exactly the way that supports the goals of the Republicans. (By Republicans, in all of this, I'm referring to the nutjobs who appear to have taken over the party, and not the nice, rational Republicans who actually still believe in the Republican ideals of small government and fiscal conservativeness (conservativity? conservation?). You know. The ones who think that women should never take the pill because it could cause an abortion. (Though, if you want to avoid abortions, the clear answer is to never have sex in the first place. :) ))

Since the Civil War, the Republican Party has made the use of the Bloody Shirt an artform and used fear and lables of "traitor" and "unpatriotic" to drive their campaigns. Especially when they feel threatened.

Sadly, it works.

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

(conservativism.)

[tayefeth.livejournal.com]

They don't seem to see the seething hatred, or at least, they think it's the same sort of thing as the sarcasm employed occasionally by what passes for the left in this country. You know, when someone complains that the 'family values' of the Republicans includes increasing the acceptable levels of arsenic in drinking water by postulating a child asking, "Please, Mommy, may I have some more arsenic?"

[tablesaw]

I would like to point out that, although no one except Coulter is calling it the "protestor's area," many people are calling it the "protest area," a term which was also in use when the convention was here in Los Angeles.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Ah, indeed. Even so, it's incredibly shoddy writing to get one's terms wrong.

It called to mind an article from the Boston Globe on "child-free" couples, people who have decided to not have children. The article, which wasn't quite as unbiased as one might have hoped, included the sentence: "Lest anyone think the child-free nature of these developments is a coincidence, consider the pet name given to the phenomenon: 'vasectomy housing.'" Well and good, except that the only hits Google returns for the phrase "vasectomy housing" are the article itself (or pages that quote the article). Google is hardly the final arbiter of language, but it's pretty suspicious when the "pet name" of something, especially something with political and social ramifications, doesn't show up anywhere on the web.

[prog.livejournal.com]

The pretty-girl/pie-wagon stuff is just bizarre. She reminds me of nothing so much as a denizen of one of those LJ communities where teenage girls post pictures of themselves so that other teenage girls can rip them to shreds in comments. Buh??

[svb1972.livejournal.com]

it's become stylish to bash the French..
after all, the French government didn't agree 100% with President Bush, so they must be evil nasty terrorist loving opponents of freedom.

And LePen is really not majority of France. He gets alot of votes these days because of economic issues. France has the largest Jewish and Arabic populations in the world, outside of Israel and the Middle East.. it causes tension, always has.

I kept hoping this article you were quoting was a bad joke.. but it seems not. Gah.. I'm really starting to worry about this Country.. labeling anyone who disagrees with the current administration as Un Patriotic seems to be the wave of the future.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Don't get me wrong: I knew that French-bashing is in style, and that Le Pen is hardly mainstream.

But I just plain don't understand how dislike of the French suddenly led to "French" being used as a generic derogatory term, one that doesn't really mean "resembling the French" in any way.

[flit.livejournal.com]

Because coming up with apropos insults is HARD.

;)

[navrins]

Actually I think that usage is centuries old, probably dating back to the medieval English/French wars. We haven't used it here for a while, probably due to things like, oh, the French being our biggest allies in the Revolution.

(Why am I telling you this? You're the linguist. You probably even know how to find out I'm completely wrong.)

[jadelennox]

To be fair, nobody takes her seriously. I'm kind of surprised that USA Today has forgotten her "Al Qaeda didn't kill enough new yorkers" business and gave her the column in the first place.

[marith.livejournal.com]

You've probably already seen this, but USA Today did kill the column.

They ought to be ashamed of themselves for running it in the first place, mind.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

I did indeed know. My comment about how it was a column for USA Today centered on the fact that she wrote it as something intended to appear in USA Today, even if they then dropped it.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Pie wagon is apparently also a frat term for vagina.